


Hey Kids, Can You Rock and Roll?

by buoyantsaturn



Series: I'm in Hell [7]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Babies, Medical Student Will Solace, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-16 00:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19307233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buoyantsaturn/pseuds/buoyantsaturn
Summary: “Mama said you’re not allowed inside. Just tell me what you want.”Apollo’s smile seemed to crack, becoming forced due to Will’s refusal. “Of course. Let me make the introduction first, then.” He bent over and picked something up. Will’s eyes traveled down to see that it was...a baby carrier? “Will, I’d like you to meet your baby sister, Bianca.”





	Hey Kids, Can You Rock and Roll?

**Author's Note:**

> happy solangeloweek! my thought process for today's prompt was: "i don't have time to write a whole new chapter of i'm in hell" to "i dont WANT to write a whole new chapter of i'm in hell right now" to "someone please give me ANY other idea" to finally "i guess I'll write a prequel to i'm in hell"  
> anyway i hope you like it!! (especially since it's not TECHNICALLY solangelo despite it being for solangelo week,,,,,)
> 
> naturally the title of this comes from bike ride by the brobecks, the same song that every other i'm in hell title comes from

All of Will’s free time was spent studying. Thursdays were always a great day for Will - based on the amount of time he had to study, not necessarily on the quality of the day - because his mom always worked a double shift on Thursdays, while Will only had one morning class. He knew he  _ shouldn’t  _ push all of his readings and assignments from earlier in the week all to one day because someday it  _ would _ come back to bite him in the ass, but at this point he didn’t have it in himself to fix his schedule. 

He was about two-thirds of the way through one of his assigned readings when the doorbell rang. At first, Will assumed that it was just the mail, that his mom had ordered something off the internet and that the UPS man would just leave the package on the porch, though clearly he’d guessed wrong when the doorbell rang twice more in quick succession.

Will made a mark in his textbook to keep his place, then got up to get the door. He started talking before the door was even fully opened, saying, “Hi, can I help...you... _ Dad?” _ When he looked up, Will felt like he was looking in a mirror - one that wiped away his freckles and tried to straighten his hair. 

“Will!” Apollo cheered, smiling brightly, though Will couldn’t see if it reached his eyes due to the sunglasses he was wearing. “My favorite son! I need to ask a favor of you - as well as make an introduction!”

“What kind of favor?” Will asked, eyes narrowing, grip tightening on the door in case he needed to slam it in his father’s face. 

“Why don’t you let me inside, and we’ll discuss?” Apollo suggested.

“Mama said you’re not allowed inside. Just tell me what you want.”

Apollo’s smile seemed to crack, becoming forced due to Will’s refusal. “Of course. Let me make the introduction first, then.” He bent over and picked something up. Will’s eyes traveled down to see that it was...a baby carrier? “Will, I’d like you to meet your baby sister, Bianca.”

“Really, Dad?” Will asked exasperatedly.  _ “Another _ kid? What is that, five now, from five different women? Are you actually going to stick around for this one?”

“I am!” Apollo told him. “But that’s where the favor comes in. You see, I’m about to go close on a house, about half an hour from here. I can’t take Bianca with me to the meeting, so I need you to look after her. Just for a few hours! I’ll be back to pick her up before your mother comes home.”

“I don’t know anything about taking care of a kid--”

“She’ll probably sleep the whole day away!” Apollo told him, his words growing frantic. “If she wakes up, she’ll need to be fed, but I have everything you’ll need for her in this bag.” As he spoke, Apollo pushed a diaper bag into Will’s arms, and forced the baby carrier into his hand. “Thank you, Will! Take good care of her for me!”

Before Will could say another word, Apollo had shut the door between them. The sound of the door slamming woke the baby, and she began to wail.

 

Half an hour later, Will had finally managed to calm Bianca, and had returned to his studying. He thought that he would still feel like he was alone in his studying since the baby was  _ hardly _ a person, but she kept staring at him as he tried to read. He’d tried moving the baby carrier - he had yet to take Bianca out of it - so that she faced away from him, but doing so made her babble in the most distracting way. 

Will wasn’t able to finish all of his homework before his mom got home for the first time all semester, which meant that he probably wasn’t going to sleep that night while he tried to catch up on his work. It wasn’t until his mom was staring the baby down with an alarmed expression that Will realized that Apollo never returned to pick her up - just under four hours later.

“William,” Naomi said carefully, not taking her eyes off the baby as if doing so would make her disappear, “do you have something you’d like to tell me?”

“She’s not mine!”

 

* * *

 

Will was getting ready for bed that night, heading back to the living room to pack up everything he needed for class the next day, and found Bianca asleep in the baby carrier. How had Will managed to forget about a  _ whole baby? _

He left her where she was, not wanting to wake her as he moved across the house to find his mom. He knocked on her open bedroom door where Naomi was picking out her outfit for the next day. “Yes, honey?” Naomi asked, keeping her eyes on the clothes in her closet.

“Dad never came back for Bianca,” Will said quietly, as if Bianca might overhear and get upset. “What do I do?”

Naomi sighed. “She’s asleep, right?” Will made an affirmative noise. “Then you should sleep, too. Go to bed, take her into your room with you, and in the morning you can take her to the police station before class.”

Will nodded. “Alright. Thanks, Mama. I love you, I’ll see you in the morning.”

He returned to the living room, carefully picked up Bianca’s carrier, and took her to his bedroom. He set on the floor, close enough that he would hear her if she started making noises, but far enough that he wouldn’t accidentally step on her when he got out of bed in the morning. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, though it also only felt like minutes before he was woken by crying, which startled him so much that he nearly fell out of his bed. Once he remembered that there was a  _ baby _ in his room, he jumped out of bed, already shushing her, and gently rocked her carrier until she calmed down enough that Will could head back to sleep. 

She woke him up a second time about an hour before his alarm was supposed to go off, so rather than sleeping that last hour, Will stayed awake and brought Bianca out into the kitchen, where Naomi was up and making coffee.

“Mama, she won’t stop crying,” Will said.

“She probably wants to be held,” Naomi told him. “Have you even taken her out of that carrier yet?”

“Uh, no, I don’t really know how--”

Naomi sighed, walking toward him. “How do you expect to give me grandchildren if you’re too afraid to hold a baby?” She crouched down to take Bianca from the carrier.

“Woah, who said anything about grandchildren?”

Naomi winced at the horrible smell coming from the baby as she held her about an arm’s length away. “Will, get a towel and lay it out on the table, then go get her diaper bag for me.”

Will gagged when he caught a whiff, and practically ran to go get one of the old towels from under the kitchen sink. As Naomi settled Bianca down on the towel on the table, Will ran over to get the diaper bag, which he brought into the kitchen, then started digging through to find a new diaper. 

He handed one to his mom along with a container of baby wipes, then continued searching through the bag to see what else was inside - there were bottles of formula which he’d found yesterday and fed to Bianca, a few pacifiers, bibs and blankets and a change of clothes, and a big brown envelope tucked into one of the side pockets. He pulled that out, popped it open, and his heart stopped at the sight of what was inside. 

“Mama…” he whispered, holding up the birth certificate for Bianca Phoebus. He continued pulling things out of the envelope - hospital record forms, a social security card for Bianca, and a death certificate for a woman Will had never heard of. When he looked back at the birth certificate, he saw that the name on the death certificate matched the name listed as Bianca’s mother’s.

Naomi’s eyes widened. “I think you’d better take all this with you to the police station.”

 

Will gave himself an extra hour to swing by the police station before class. He didn’t have one of those carseats that hooks up to the baby carrier, so Naomi helped him rig the carrier up with the seatbelt to keep it from moving as much as possible - as long as Will drove extra carefully, Bianca should be fine. 

When he arrived at the police station, he asked to talk to an officer, and was told to sit and wait. Bianca started to fuss as soon as he set her carrier on the ground, so Will picked her up and held her the way that Naomi had shown him to. When she still sounded close to tears, Will got out of his seat and started pacing, bouncing Bianca gently in his arms. He started talking to her in a hushed voice, though there was only so much he could think to say to a baby.

“Where’s your dad?” he asked her as she started to settle down. “Huh? Where’s your dad? You want us to find dad, right? Yeah, we’re gonna find dad. Can you say  _ dad? _ No, you probably can’t talk yet, can you?”

After a short while, an officer approached him and said, “You wanted to speak to an officer?”

“Yes, sir,” Will said.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asked, pulling out a notepad and a pen. 

“My deadbeat dad came to my house yesterday and asked me to babysit my half-sister, but he never came back,” Will explained in the simplest way he could think to do so. “He left a folder in her diaper bag that has her birth certificate and hospital records and stuff inside, too.”

The officer raised an eyebrow, then looked pointedly at Bianca. “And this is your half-sister? How do you know she’s your sister?”

“The birth certificate has my dad’s name on it,” Will answered. “I don’t have a paternity test to prove it, but I have to assume he’s her dad too.”

“And what would you like me to do in this situation?”

Will frowned. “Uh, find my dad, I guess? Not that I think he’s all that great of a dad, but he’s at least done it before.”

The officer nodded. “Alright. If you wait here, I’ll go call the social worker so she can take your sister to a foster home until we find her - _ your _ \- dad. Hopefully she can be here in about half an hour, but with early morning traffic, it could be longer.”

“I don’t have half an hour,” Will told him. “I’m in med school, I have to get to class before then.”

“You can’t leave her here without family or a social worker present,” the officer said. “You’ll have to come back later, before the station closes for the night. Or you can set up an appointment to meet with the social worker another time. Until then, we’ll start looking for your dad, and if you could give me your name and phone number, then I’ll call you if we find him.”

 

Will had to sneak in the back door of the classroom, not because he was late - he was right on time, actually - but because he didn’t know how accepting his professor would be of having a baby in the room.

He took his seat right as Professor Chiron started talking, and he tried to set the carrier down as quietly as possible next to his chair so that being wouldn’t be jostled or make any noise. Unfortunately, as soon as Will took his eyes off of her, Bianca made a loud gurgling noise, and Will froze.

Chiron’s eyes landed on his immediately - this professor was known for hearing every little thing that happened in his classroom, so  _ of course _ this was where Will was stuck for the next six hours. “Mr. Solace, did you have something to say?”

“No, sir,” Will answered, right as Bianca started to laugh.

“Do you have...a baby? Under your table?” Chiron asked. 

Will tensed, hanging his head. “I’m so sorry, it’s a  _ really _ long story. I’ll try to keep her quiet, I’m sorry.” Naturally, Bianca made yet  _ another  _ noise, and so Will picked her up out of her carrier and held her against his chest. Unfortunately, that meant that he didn’t have a hand to bring out all of his supplies for class. He could feel everyone’s eyes on him as he tried to dig around in his backpack without dropping the baby, though soon enough she was sobbing in his ear. 

When he looked up again, Chiron was standing next to him, frowning down at him. “I’m so sorry,” Will said, feeling like he was close to tears himself. 

Chiron held out his hands. “May I?”

Hesitantly, Will held Bianca out to his professor, who took her and went back to his place at the front of the room, cradling the baby in his arms and bouncing her slightly until she stopped crying completely. Will expected that he would bring her back as soon as she’d settled down, but then Chiron began to teach, expertly holding Bianca with one hand as he wrote things out on the white board. 

Will scrambled to start taking notes.

 

* * *

 

Naomi was already home when Will returned from class that night. Right away, she asked about how things went at the police station, so Will relayed what had happened to her. 

“You should call first thing in the morning to make that appointment,” Naomi told him from the stove where she was making dinner. When Will didn’t agree right away, Naomi shot him a look over her shoulder, and saw her son pouting as he stared down at the baby in his arms. “William.”

“Is foster care really the best thing for her?” Will asked. “I mean, how long could it possibly take for them to find dad? We can take care of her until then, so there’s no reason for her to go to a foster home.”

“Who is this  _ we?” _ Naomi asked. “I’ve already raised my child. I can  _ help _ you, if this is what you really want to do, but this isn’t going to end up like that dog you got for your tenth birthday - she is  _ your _ responsibility and  _ yours _ alone.”

“I know, Mama.”

“Are you sure you want this?” Naomi tried again. “What if they never find Apollo? Are you going to give her up after a week? Because the alternative is that you try to raise a baby while getting through med school  _ and _ residency, which are quite possibly the two most difficult things on the planet.”

“I have to try,” Will insisted. “I’ll… I’ll try my best for a week, and if it turns out that I’m in over my head, then I’ll call the social worker.”

Naomi sighed and walked over to them. She took Will’s face in her hands and pulled him down to press a kiss to his forehead. “You’ve always had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known. I’ll support you as best I can.”

 

Before Will put Bianca to bed that night - she still had to sleep in her carrier because he didn’t have anything better for her - he paced around his room with the baby in his arms. 

“They’re gonna find dad soon, okay? You’ll be back with dad in no time.”

Bianca reached up for him with her chubby little hands and made grabbing motions at him as she said, “Da? Dada?”

Will smiled. “That’s right! Dada! You’ll be back with dada soon.”

Bianca tapped him on the chin, the only part of his face she could reach, and she said, “Dada!”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! don't forget to check out solangeloweek.tumblr.com to see everything else that people have made for this event!


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